I mean seriously, you go out and assault an air force base, for what? Nothing but to destroy that huge badass mobile base with orbital bombardment satellite uplinks, using itself. I mean you could also bomb the Pentagon, but seriously?

Why would the Brotherhood, of all people. order the destruction of such a fabulous piece of technology? Why not have their hero go and clear the base first then send in their own force behind him to capture the base, vertibird hangers and radio control tower? I mean having all those vertibirds, that left over Enclave tech after their slaughter, that huge communication tower, a mobile base crawler and the ability to call in orbital bombardment couldn't possibly be a bad thing, especially with the recent loss of Liberty Prime. You'd think they'd want ownership of the only thing that's a bad enough dude to stop that giant metal patriot.

For me i start the purifier, and go as far into the DLC as "Three weeks later..." than i go tell Lyons "I had enough of this" and hop on the train to New Vegas! If i really want the one unique weapon that Broken Steal gives us, i'll just go get Elijah's in the Big Empty.

Honestly i wasn't a fan of how Bethesda just threw together the stories for Fallout 3's DLCs.

Kudos to Obsidian for (almost all) of their story's solid structure. And kudos to Bethesda for their stellar world design.

I never liked the BS ending either and pretty much for all of those reasons that were listed there too.

I also never liked the Mothership Zeta ending either, we gain control of an alien space ship that contains thousands of frozen people, super mutants, ghouls and who knows what else, an entire drone factory, prison cells, cience and medical labs, a death ray, weapon lab, and so many other stuff and in the end all we can get is some free weapons, ammo and little else every once in a while ... I want to be able to take prisoners, experiment on animals, unfreeze people and make new possible followers or get more people to be a crew of the ship each with their own special skills (like an engineer that could repair some bits of the ship or equipment, a doctor that would heal you like normal doctors on the wasteland which Eliot should do himself but he doesn't , a barber to change your appearance and so on...), create a drone follower and if it gets destroyed create another one, maybe make abomination followers too and more...

Oh sorry I was just rambling and since all I could say about what is bad in the BS ending was already said, I just went on about Mothership Zeta ending .

I don't think capturing the crawler would be as simple as "Shoot all the bad guys, move paladins in". The Enclave is known to have a lot of AIs kicking around, surely one of which would reside in that base. There's also no way to tell if they do or don't have a backdoor dead man's switch lying around that'd annihilate the base anyway. Nah, the only problem I have with BS's ending is that you have to blast the Citadel to kingdom come in order to gain access to a pretty snazzy Dirty Harry reference.

It reads to me like "Congrats! You just saved the DC region from another apocalypse and completely wrecked the Enclave. Here's a hundred caps, a pat on the back and a positively useless outside of Adams AFB energy weapon, now -beep- off to Project Purity. Bigsley needs a hand with some trivial investigations.", whereas if you're evil, "Hey, you just blasted the last hope for the people of the Capitol Wasteland into oblivion, destroyed a historical landmark, and set into motion a second apocalypse. You ass. But hey, here's all this snazzy loot worth several thousand caps, a snazzy unique .44 mag, and some cool pre-war lore/pop culture references. Party in Adams! BYOB!"

That's the only problem I have with BS. I suppose their logic was "doing good is reward enough", which applies fine in real life. But this isn't real life. It's a video game. Why do villians get all the post-apoc babes and sports cars yet the good guys get dinner at a half-collapsed burger king?!

Now I've never played Broken Steel, but from what I read of the complaints in this thread it sounds like this would be an opportunity for a clever modder. Seems like it would be easy to add rewards for the good ending, maybe a little more complicated to take away stuff from the evil. Any new dialog would likely be unvoiced, but everyone loves AWOP.

I have problems with almost all F3 dlc when we talk about plot. For example I could buy that in Operation Anchorage main hero wants to open the gate to find some interesting items or informations but How Brotherhood would betrayed their own soldiers? In DC killing each other is the worst idea anybody could get. They have no new recruits, Enclave and Lyons S.H.I.T(Soldiers hitting in target... Much better name then Brotherhood of Steel after changing main goal) have technology on much higher level and most important their policy doesn't help with contact with savages.

Fallout 3's writing just seems to me to be a great bit of spaghetti against the wall, like they scattered writers ideas like jacks across the world, not really making them all mean much. and Broken steel just makes it worse.

I almost never play it through properly. I have a couple of mods which I made for myself which basically bypass bits of stupid writing I hate (such as Colonel Autumn just straight-up murdering you for no reason if you side with him), so I almost never actually have to remember how awful the planning was.

That being said, I really do love the ENVIRONMENTS that Fallout 3 and the DLC provide. I just played them on my own terms.

Bethesda has always been pretty terrible at writing in general; Obsidian blew them out of the water when it came to quest design and they carried over the continuity of the older fallout games gracefully. I've only liked Oblivion when it came to Bethesda's style of writing and it was only because it wasn't a glorified power fantasy(the way they focused on Martin and not the player exclusively). I find all the side quests in Fallout 3 very boring and tedious(with the exception of reilly's rangers), and the main quest is rather dull(especially the vanilla/broken steel ending). I will say that Bethesda has always been good at world building and I don't really see that changing anytime soon. I'm still very excited for Fallout 4 though despite my cynical expectations for the narrative structure.

I think that the BOS sees the crawler as too dangerous to "loot" and with the ZAX's series too unpredictable to just "take over", I use a Citadel Armory mod to be able to get the Calahan with a speech check with Elder Lyons.

I agree Rise Zeta could offer you SO many resources to exploit, would love to use them all. You should mod that

In regards to the two Fallouts I prefer FO3's worlds and dungeons but will agree to FNV's writing. I like the "villians" of FO3 better though with the Enclave and more feral Super Mutants. Personally I like Point Lookout and wish that there were more to do there.

So after playing around in the Broken Steel Environment I can safely say that as an evil character, I did not enjoy the massive amount of business that was made about haaving the clean water, despite it being more than hazardous to human health with the FEV lacing. You'd think that more people would be testing the water and the deaths(though I hadn't seen any, only know of the bellyaching folks in the clinics) would show a much greater resentment to drinking it or moving it out. I know Three Dog talks about it, but then again, three dog is just sso weird about his shit anyway.

But back to three dog. I remember that there had to be some voiced reaction that three dog had to me blowing up the citadel. It had to be there somewhere, but I never heard it. I remember it from when I was on PS3. If it wasn't actually in, then why not, but if it was, I never heard it in TTW, after hours of listening. A transmission sort of went like "whose got the gorilla sized balls for that?" when talking about the blowing up the citadel.

I'm sort of ok with the deaths just on the horizon, after two weeks, but my action had much less impact now. The thing with the Enclave assault was alright, I find the tesla cannon obscenely ineffective post vegas. All in all, I still prefer the Pitt and Point Lookout to Anchorage, Steel, or Zeta.

Obsidian does have much better writing.
Hope that in Fallout 4, Bethesda both ups their game and gives Obsidian another crack at the West Coast.

That said, after a hard fought war, they would be taking care to conserve their remaining troops.
Besides their scribes would still be busy trying to fully take advantage of the enclave technology they already had.
The risk of the mobile base being bobby trapped would high so why risk the loses needed to take it or the real possibility of losing the scribes sent to study it.
Also the vertibirds are of limited use unless you have a large source of high grade fuel.

I agree that a slightly better reward would make a great mod.

Always bring a companion or two that is slower than you.
Because you don't need to out run a Deathclaw.
You just need to out run your companions (Just bring a lot of companions in case the Deathclaw is really hungry!).

I keep thinking that there was some voice line that Three Dog had to respond to me about blowing up the citadel, but I spent hours in DC again to try and hear it from him, to nothing.

I then went up to Three Dog himself, after quietly assassinating the Brotherhood group that was hostile to my prescence there, only to have Three Dog call me the Hero of the Wasteland returning.

Like...what? Was the poisoning the world not enough? Was the whole killing the Powered Armored "good Guys" not enough either to get a reaction out of him? Where's the reaction? Where's the logic behind him handing me the key and coordinates to an armory so I can keep killing more of the people who protect him?

One thing that I do enjoy about Fallout 3's storyline, which is also well and featured in Vegas, is the ability to skip forward in bits. I don't have to inquire through beagle as to where and what Benny was doing, and the same goes for Moriarty(I also vaporized him, so eh). Then I don't have to go Meet Dr Li or go to Project Purity and look for him, and I don't need to go to Novac and talk to Manny(couldn't kill Dr Li, but Manny's skull is in several spots scattered about Novac).

So I go to Smith Casey's Garage and I head into Vegas. Very sort of similiar in that regard, but the fact of the matter is that Vegas features many many many more options on how to proceed towards the end goal at Hoover Dam than the fight to the Jefferson Memorial, and one of the nicer things I enjoy is the simple lack of scripted events that I hate. that plot device grenade in Vault 87 agitates me so much as compared to the taking of the chip from me in Caesar's Camp at the fort. It also didn't degenerate into me fighting through Powered Armor(as a slick smooth talking altruistic bastard of a character to rival benny, this was me being a square peg jammed into a triangle hole).

The choices between Vegas and 3 are of a much greater variety and depth. Fallout 3 was so damned Binary between what amounts to the options that a White Leg would pick, or what a young, romantic Ranger would pick.

But sometimes Fallout 3 kind of gets it, and its what makes these games so odd is that they made made with so many different visions at once. The Pitt, The Brotherhood Outcasts, and Harold all come to mind.

The Pitt is a good DLC because it sort of touches on questions of how to recover, methods, and means to an end. I can never tell if Ashur will deliver on giving the cure to the Trog Mutation to the Workers of the Pitt, or if the slaves will actually be capable enough to defend themselves without the Bosses, much less work on the cure in a small corner of a blighted Steel Mill. What I don't like is that the end rewards are nearly the same, regardless of who is in charge, with the biggest difference being the survival of Ashur or not. It changes, but in a way that has less talked about than even Honest Hearts.

The Brotherhood Outcasts are almost like a moment of sentience for Fallout 3, where you have an actually legitimate and capable organization that is doing what it should be, with leadership, boundaries, and opinions. If only the other 80% of people in Fallout 3 were given the same level of treatment/unique look. Don't make them just raiders, slavers, or Tribals. If a character in New Vegas can admit to jokingly making up a tribe name for a single story with as many moral questions as a Fallout 3 DLC...

I really don't like that I dragged Harold across America just so they could root him in one spot, but the dilemma of a person wanting to die or not and how other people have visions for him and of him was not a bad little bit. This quest has so many different options on how to proceed, with some decent consequences, but I suppose some questions could appear, like why a member of the brotherhood outcasts would give you a suit of heavy power armor if you couldn't wear it(and he doesn't train you to wear it).

tl;dr I think the big reason I, and others like New Vegas' writing over Fallout 3 is that there is so much more of it, and it is so much deeper.

Just out curiosity, what is it that you don't like. The more I play F3 the more I accept the plot. Sure NV's writing puts F3 to shame, but I think the plot's fine. Not heroic, but fine.

I'd say so much of the game is just mashed together, or highly ridiculous events happen just to propel the plot. The vanilla ending for FO3 was utter silliness, and no choice could really affect the outcome.
I guess for me FO3's main story feels more like a slideshow than a continuous series of events. Each segment of the quest is almost entirely independent of other events, a lot of occurrences seem more like filler, like the Little Lamplighters. Compare that to NV where you encounter the Boomers, who actually end up playing a role in the story.
And even though FO3 had better dungeons...it's really just because there wasn't much going on everywhere else. The Mojave feels alive with all sorts of happenings going on independent of you--caravans, skirmishes, etc. All the CW has is one Albino Radscorpion after another.

Proph, I like the overall quest for F3, supplying clean water. They should have called it clean irrigation water instead of drinking water but that's not very dramatic. I see the CW as still apocalyptic. Tiny communities with little contact with each other. So each faction, group, or area isn't necessarily aware of or concerned with others. The mohave is half civilized so people can travel and communicate. So every one knows what every one is doing.

I seen the ending, I'm not impressed, but for the opposite reason: I wanted to get the Enclave, or at least the garrison there, to surrender or defect. This would have been a golden opportunity to use the mercy option on Autumn to transform the Colonel from enemy to ally. Fallout 3 is all about shoot-em ups. For once I'd like to see diplomacy, true cooperation win the day, especially the Enclave with is showing the barest signs of genuine reform. Let that seed finally bloom!

I do wish we had a lot more options with the Fallout 3 main quest, some kind of surrender by the Enclave, some option to make new coordinates with the missiles at the end of Broken Steel, like say the ocean so as to not use them on people ala the Divide. Although there is the decision to not take part in any of it and just go to the Mojave...

You CAN head cannon that the Enclave disappeared, or made peace, then head to the Mohave. If you use the games as story lattice work, you do have some control over what REALLY happened. For instance, in mine Rivet City is inside of th Abraham Lincoln, with a whole flotilla of ships in the Anacostia, so much so you can walk to Maryland from the naval yard, Vault 106 is humming, Vault 108 is an important part of Canterbury Commons, and no Enclave Troops were actually killed cause the bodies inside are telecontolled meatbags. Think Replecants, but with cloned Lobomites on the business end. It makes the Enclave permanently threatening....

I didn't read every post but there's a weapon potentially acquired from helios 1 that gives you the ability to call down a strike in FNV. Since you can go to the fnv area and back to the fo3 area in ttw, you maybe can orbital strike things there? Of course you have to go back to helios 1 to recharge it every time you use it.

#2: I never thought about it before, and I hardly have an interest in player homes, but now I'd really like the crawler.

#3: It wasn't the Brotherhood of Steel blowing the crawler up, it was Lyons' Pride, the splinter group good guys that put civilians first. I'm sure the Outcasts were appalled, assuming they knew.

#4: Is there really no crawler player home yet? Seeing what is out there it seems as though it would be somewhat simple comparatively speaking, but I'm far from being a modder. Theoretically, from an uneducated bystander's view, wouldn't it be possible to cut the ending scenes of Broken Steel and add a claim option to the bombardment menu? There wouldn't be voice support of course, but without a heavily scripted ending would that loss outweigh gaining the crawler as a base?

#5: We could add a DC specific orbital targeting device into the crawler somewhere after it is claimed to make use of a daily bombardment like the NV one, but with MISSILES.

#6: I'd really like to see the crawler and the Sink connected to Mothership Zeta via teleports. Maybe even seed some Sink AI proxies through the other bases. Then toss in Mothership Zeta Crew compatibility for good measure, so the crawler and the Sink are utilized by the your own faction as well. Really liven things up. Can you imagine anything cooler? It just feels RIGHT to me.

#7: I told a friend of mine about this and he suggested beaming the crawler into a hangar in Mothership Zeta to use as a deployable ground base. That feels less right to me and much harder to implement, but worth mentioning.

Broken Steel was sad, there is no other word for it. The harder enemy spawns were easy but broke the world, the simple nature of it made the ending you pick irrelevant, the unique weapon wasn't interesting and besides for the assault on the air force base there wasn't much cool parts to it.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say Broken Steel did a lot more good than most have said here.

* It made the vanilla ending, which was even more stupid, irrelevant. I'm glad, because the vanilla ending is just head bashingly stupid.

* It allowed you to play past the ending, Fallout 2 style.

* It allowed you to see the results of your handiwork, at least in the short term, again a la Fallout 2, for good or evil.

* It explained just how the Enclave had so much reserve troops in the stock game (they never could have fit all that in Raven Rock).

I won't deny the writing is still kinda wooden and it struck me as a bit weird the Lyons faction still wanted to nuke Adams AFB instead of trying to strip it clean, then nuke it, but given it had a likely dead man's switch or another insane AI calling the shots, I guess it makes sense for them to bomb the crap out of it first (they could always go into the rubble and dig through that later)

Broken Steel certainly could've been better, but overall I thought it was good. The main quest add-on, as on-rails and wooden as it was, was actually kind of fun to play imo. I enjoyed the side quests that it adds, the new weapons are cool, and it let you play after finishing the main quest which I really like.

The main think I disliked about Broken Steel was Overlords getting a damage bonus against you with certain weapons regardless of your armor/DR/whatever. That and Albino Radscorpions aren't really any more dangerous than their regular brethren, they just soak up a lot more bullets.

Also, something I want to say in regards to nuking the base at the end. People seem to forget that Lyon's Brotherhood faction is more concerned about helping the people of the waste and eliminating threats than gathering pre-war technology. In fact, outside of the Citadel I don't think there are any events showcasing them scavenging for technology. I definitely understand that Adams AFB probably had a lot of things they could've used to help their cause, but given that the Enclave managed to destroy Liberty Prime I think making sure the Enclave were annihilated was the more pressing matter for them.

Perhaps I'm just grateful for the fix to the ending of FO3, but Broken Steel helped a lot.

I still remember my reaction when Fawkes refused to activate the purifier after proving he was immune to radiation back at Vault 87.

While I would have liked to see more with better writing, I liked what was in Broken Steel.

PL is my personal favorite.

Always bring a companion or two that is slower than you.
Because you don't need to out run a Deathclaw.
You just need to out run your companions (Just bring a lot of companions in case the Deathclaw is really hungry!).

Sorry if this breathes new life into an old and dead thread, but I wanted to weigh in here with my opinion on FO3 v. FNV and the BoS/Broken Steel DLC if I could.

I was introduced to the Wastelands via Fallout: NV first and enjoyed it despite the fact that the 'Courier' plotline really weak (seriously, I figured there would be some Mojave Express jobs/quests as well as the fact that the character is a travelling messenger by trade and, while the loss of memory about the area can be attributed to head trauma if you stretch your disbelief, the fact that he/she had no maps on them seems a bit illogical - another Vault Dweller would have been optimal) and hated how all the DLCs beat you over the head with hints leading up to the equally illogical "Lonesome Road" DLC by having Ulysses pre-visit all of the others and leave clues/help around.

What I REALLY loved about FNV was the fact that my sneaky lead-shooting character was never FORCED to join the BoS, wear power armor, or any of that crap. Any that I found could be cap-fodder for some merchant for all I cared. I could avoid the BoS's bunker, iirc, and did not HAVE to invite the Enclave Remnants to the final battle (which includes their power armor training, etc.,). It was nice.

Now, enter FO3, thanks to TTW, which is the only way I can play it.

I liked the storyline better, the world felt fuller/more realistic, and most of the DLCs were awesome.

Except... Operation: HALO (err... I mean Operation: Anchorage. Sorry. That DLC is nothing to me but an FPS sim smothered in plotline weaksauce) and Broken Steel, both of which pinned an arm behind my back and forced me to deal with the BoS and their rejects. From the minute I take Doctor Li up to the Citadel until the moment I wake up "3 weeks later", I play with heavily-ground teeth anticipating the end of the forced partnership. After that, I stride back out into the CW and resume normal life until it is time to head to Nevada.

Hell, I don't even like 'helping' them get to GNR.

Sorry for the rant - maybe some kind soul will make a mod with an MCM menu that lets you just shut off the BoS entirely. lol

For me, FO3's rickety plotting collapsed in the DLCs. The only way it makes sense is when I play according to the narrative in my head. FNV's plotting appeals a bit more to me and most of the characters have more personality than the characters in FO3.

I'm looking forward to seeing what mods creative minds come up with in the crossworlds of TTW.

The only reason I ever liked it was it continues the game after the ending, I loved liberty prime and I mean they destroy him first thing in the dlc.

Same here. I generally move on to the Mojave after the regular game "ending" if I have not gone there earlier. I have to say, I do not really like any of the FO3 DLCs, and have gotten bored with most of those in New Vegas as well.

My computer specs are too embarrassing to reveal, but the game still runs.

Broken Steel’s greatest blunder was forcing you to join the Brotherhood, gutting any room for role playing. The majority of Fallout 3 allows the player a great deal of wiggle room in defining the personality, actions, motives and loyalties of your character, which makes being drafted by the Brotherhood and forced into the role of their obedient champion deeply unsatisfying. This is especially egregious because up until this point in the story the game actively encouraged you to question whether Lyon’s Brotherhood were truly the spotless good guys they appeared to be.

Dr Li warns you not to trust them, they shoot at Ghouls on sight, and regard most outsiders with an air of smug superiority, all of which seems primed to make the player ponder if you really want these fanatical crusaders watching over the Wasteland*. Broken Steel however doubles back on this more nuanced portrayal, and rather than allowing the player to reach their own conclusions it paints the BOS vs Enclave fight as a simple black and white affair, never addressing the implications of the Brotherhood’s hitherto shady conduct.

* I suspect Bethesda may have wanted to paint Lyons Brotherhood as a more morally neutral faction in line with the earlier games but wussed out at the last minute. It seems strange they went to the effort of bringing up their less than wholesome deeds yet never allows the player to call Sarah, Lyons or Rothschild out on them.

I agree with previous poster. The fact that they left us with no decision whatsoever in terms who we want to help, despite the existence of the "Karma"-mechanic, killed my immersion. I remember when my character was captured by the Enclave and was interrogated by Autumn asking for the code to the purifier. I remember thinking "Hey if I give him the code they will probably make me join up" because of my knowledge with my Father's work with Project Purity, so I gave him the code and then he shot and killed me. One of the most disappointing moment in gaming ever for me.

That quest would've been a great moment to pass a moral dilemma for your character that would adhere to their black-and-white Karma-mechanic - Allowing Father's work in the hands of those he opposed in return of joining the most powerful faction in the Wasteland, or remain with the "good guys".

Broken Steel would've been an incredible opportunity to further elaborate an Enclave questline. Attacking the Citadel, consolidating control over the wasteland, mopping up the Mutants in D.C.

Many mod authors have tried to build an Enclave quest line, but none have really succeeded. Most were left unfinished, others simply abandoned in a really rough state. A new main quest line for the Fallout 3 could top my list of my most wanted mod ever.

That's why the only reason I have Broken Steel installed is because many mods use its resources. Some DLCs you only place once or twice, then ignore them. All Bethesda games are like that. I have clear favorites for each game, and also DLCs that are only installed for the resources.

I have some RL military service under my belt and can fully understand why the BoS would destroy the crawler. It follows the same reason why we destroy resources we leave behind at the end of a campaign. I helped disable six M2 Bradleys that had no reasonable path home. It has been over a decade and I suspect you can still find them on the satellite maps rusting away in the parking lot where we left them.

Joint Base Andrews is the real life equivalent of Adams AFB. It is a 5 hour walk from the Pentagon, taking the path used in BoS would take a full day of walking. Something I just noticed Andale is Annandale =) http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Andale

The Enclave Crawler

The NASA crawler the concept was build on.

Finally to my point, The NASA crawler is on a near perfect path and despite this it will cease operation if it tilts 5 degrees or more in any direction, and it moves at 1.6 miles per hour. This clearly was useful pre-war for moving the repair, housing, and command facilities near the projects being worked on. It was a base utility at best, with no practical combat application.

Now Post-War with degraded road conditions, I doubt it could crawl a foot before hitting a 5 degree incline. Thus it would be fully immobile.

The BoS was left with the option of destroying it, finding enough people to staff TWO locations with five hours travel distance between them, or relocating from the Pentagon to Adams AFB in order to maintain a wing of vertibirds as there are no facilities for doing so at the Pentagon.

You may point out that last option as being viable and I can quickly quash it. Who won the battle of project purity and why? The BoS won because they had homefield advantage, and this was reinforced in the first hour of BoS when Liberty Prime was destroyed in transit to Adams AFB.

Why can't the BoS just get more people to staff it? Well that is answered by Ashur in the Pitt, he is ashamed he had to turn to the slavers to begin the reclamation of Pittsburgh. Ashur had flexible morals which lead him away from the same BoS who would be incapable of making the same choices. They are power-armored boy scouts, you know the "Good Guys".

The BoS are limited by their own morality, go back and listen to Ashur. Just like Lonesome road, it starts off weird and disconnected but as you become familiar with the wasteland it grows on you.